Author: Harold Dalton

This essay is Part Four of the Who Can Play? Race, Gender, and Bodies series. The introduction that follows below is the same for all five essays. One of my great academic mentors, who would almost certainly prefer to remain unnamed in this article, had a fundamental belief in common with me: that sports matter. But while we certainly cycled along the same roads, both metaphorically and literally, it became clear that we were approaching a similar topic from slightly different directions. Over five weeks in 2016, we explored these directions, with research conducted at Tufts and MIT. Here follows…

In 2008, we relaunched Derailed as a monthly magazine. Every issue would feature a headline article and then a scattering of the essays and silly nonsense that had made us popular. Back on Track was the first issue, and it was an apt subject matter: my part was written from the Zesdaagse Rotterdam. I was there alone running the live broadcast for Cycling.TV, lugging a desktop computer and monitor across the city each day so that I could plug it into the AV truck. It was a pretty good gig. The race put me in an expensive hotel with all…

Our friends at The London Bike Show have taken the tough decision to move their trade show from “delayed” to “canceled.” The show will return in March 2021. We kind of hate trade shows because you always get cornered by Gil from the Simpsons trying to convince you to cover (or sometimes to buy for cash!) his latest job lot of ladybird bike bells from AliExpress… but the London Bike Show is a bit classier than that. Thankfully. Here’s what they’re saying: Since making the initial announcement on 12th March that the shows would be delayed until July 2020, the…

Cyanide, and their new publisher with a daft name, have confirmed more details about their new Tour de France 2020 videogame for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The big news? It’s got a first person camera. Ever wanted a POV of a virtual Chris Froome’s lycra-covered ass crack? Now you got it, plus some spindly little arms that seem like they’d be really disorienting as you try to play. Looks absolutely horrible. Maybe if it has VR headset support… ah, but then we’d have to buy a VR headset and wear it. What would the neighbors think? In other…

Yeah, we’re doing a #tbt today. One of the Ts stands for Tuesday. Here are our media awards from 2009. Which seems a bit weird, since we were also earning a living working in that same media. At least we didn’t say that Cycling.TV was either really good or really shit this time, like we used to do depending on our general mood. And that 2009 Armstrong – Contador feud turned out to be funnier than we expected. This entire article about it reads like a Striking the Sun chapter. “I went to see Lance before the race and he…

Meilan is one of those rare companies that hits us up on our work email and we have to quietly move them over to the Cyclry ecosystem. We’re actually not sure what their deal is. They manufacture a lot of gear that looked interesting enough for us to reply asking for a review unit, but all that happened was that they started sending us their cryptic press releases even more frequently. Look: we’re open to off-brand cycling gear. Head units and sensors are pretty much still relegated to the AliExpress category, with even the most high-end gear barely approaching technology…

The Muur-Kapelmuur. It’s a climb so tough they named it twice. Until recently, it was the decisive climb that settled the Ronde van Vlaanderen, and it’s still the one-two punch with the Bosberg that settles Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. It’s also known as the Muur van Geraardsbergen, named for the town it overlooks. Geraardsbergen is one of those anonymous grey Belgian towns that just about conceals its heroin problem enough for American tourists to be fooled by its cobbled streets. Its biggest cultural asset, apart from the cobbled hill this article is about, is a statue of a boy pissing. Not the really…

Welcome to the inaugural Cyclry monthly wrap up of pro cycling life. While it’s a month that will go down in history for a lot of reasons, there’s not a great deal of bike racing to talk about… So we’ve really picked a great time to launch this. We’re experimenting with a podcast format for this feature. Let us know if you hate it. Also let us know what platforms you’d like to see it on… Without any further ado, it’s time for a feature that always been a great hit in the car on the way to bike races:…